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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

South Australia already gets the majority of their energy from renewables [1] [2]. They recently commissioned (end of Oct '21) two synchronous condensers [3] that allow for a reduction in thermal generation for grid frequency support. (EDIT: See my below comment for retraction of this broad statement: "They have the lowest energy costs in Australia"), and have only had an hour or two of outages in the last five years.

[1] https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australia-makes-big-leap-t...

[2] https://opennem.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=1y&interval=1w

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_condenser

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https://www.canstarblue.com.au/electricity/average-electrici...

South Australia does not have cheaper electricity bills. We also had a multi-day outage in 2016 which was partially due to wind generators shedding load. Large scale solar also periodically turn off rather than pay to add power to the grid due to too much installed capacity and no suitable storage.

Your link's sources are "Canstar Blue electricity customer satisfaction survey, January 2021." I will argue the reliability of that data source, and you can consult OpenNEM's price data per region (note that Western Australia [SWIS], while on OpenNEM, is not a part of the NEM grid). The blackout you mention was over five years ago, as my comment mentioned ("and have only had an hour or two of outages in the last five years."). Large scale solar does have to curtail when the spot price goes negative, which is leading to the development of new transmission to New South Wales [1]. The price of power frequently goes negative during daylight hours in SA due to an abundance of renewables.

[1] https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2021/09/30/nsw-gives-a...

I would argue actual bills paid (as shown in the camstar data) is important to the average voter vs wholesale price as you have quoted.

I would agree retail rates are more relevant than wholesale rates, while at the same time, there's a lot of noise in what the "average" is. If you're exposed to the spot price (Time of Use plans/tariffs) and judicious about when you use electricity, it will be very cheap. If you are not exposed to the spot price, and/or you use a lot of power when rates are higher, your power will be very expensive. I've spent ~30 minutes looking for a reliable indicator of retail rates for residential customers, and I can't find one other than customer surveys. I did find a release from the SA premier indicating $350 million AUD in electrical energy savings over the last two years [1]. Also, this post [2] asserts SA to have the lowest wholesale rates (per Australian Energy Market Operator/AEMO) in Australia by early next year.

I rescind my statement from my higher level comment that "They have the lowest energy costs in Australia"; the data is incomplete, there are multiple factors at play between generators, transmission, and retail supplier cost variations, and it was too broad of a statement considering all of the factors involved (when I should've referred specifically to wholesale rates influenced by renewables).

[1] https://www.premier.sa.gov.au/news/media-releases/news/bang-...

[2] https://indaily.com.au/news/business/2021/05/10/rise-of-sa-r...

There's a lot more nuance to the 2016 event. Ironically, the wind generators could have saved SA from a multi-hour blackout but the "settings" being used by the wind farms were overly paranoid (in my simple understanding) and caused them to shut-off before their more realistic danger limits were reached.

This is more of a failure of development and regulation of standards, which, I believe, have now been resolved. Said standards had already been developed in countries that had more experience in wind generation than Australia.

The "cause" was unprecedented wind speeds that brought down a few of the big "giraffes" that carry high voltage wires across the state and the interconnectors between states. See article below for example photo.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-28/sa-statewide-blackout...

A lot of good has actually come out of that event, none related to the politicking.

More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_South_Australian_blackout

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